Joiner CV Examples & Writing Guide

Before the sample, a note on the word. Joiner is the UK and Irish title for a woodworker who makes and fits timber work: doors, windows, staircases, fitted furniture, shopfronts. A bench joiner makes them in a workshop; a site joiner fits them, and many adverts simply say "carpenter and joiner". If your work is mostly site carpentry (first fix, roofs, stud walls, formwork), our carpenter and joiner page fits you better. This page is for joiners whose CV is about what they make and fit.

This sample is for someone with ten years: an apprenticeship in a joinery workshop, then shopfitting on site, now bench work in an architectural joinery shop. The name and employers are invented.

Shop foremen and site managers are deciding one thing: can you be left alone with an expensive piece of timber. Four signals answer that.

• Bench or site, and how much of each. Bench joinery in a workshop and second-fix fitting on a live site need different habits. Say which you have done and for how long, because a shop hiring for the bench will not chase you to find out.
• What you have actually made. Stairs, fire doors, sash windows, curved panelling, shopfronts, reception desks, kitchens. A product list is the fastest proof of level in this trade.
• Machines and setting out. Whether you can set a spindle moulder, change a cutter block, run a panel saw, work from a rod, or program a CNC. Naming the machines saves the foreman a trial day.
• Tolerance and rework. "Worked to 1 mm on face frames", "under 2% reject rate", "no returns for gaps on 40 stores". Anyone can say they take pride in their work; a number says it for you.
• Cards and a clean record. A CSCS card for site work, plus forklift and MEWP training. On commercial sites, no card means no gate access.

“Half the joiners who apply write "carried out joinery duties". The ones I call tell me what they made last year, what machines they set themselves, and what tolerance they hold. If someone has hung fire doors and can talk about intumescent seals, that is a two-minute decision.”

Three or four lines under your name: years, bench or site, what you make, machines, and your cards. Swap the numbers for your own.

The weakest joinery CVs list the trade back at the employer: cut timber, assembled units, followed drawings. Here are eight typical lines with the detail a foreman is actually looking for.

Split this into what you can make, what you can run and what you can read. A foreman scans for the machines first.

• Products: internal and external doors, fire door sets, casement and sash windows, straight and winder staircases, fitted wardrobes and kitchens, shopfronts, counters, wall panelling, curved and veneered work.

• Machines and tools: panel saw, table saw, spindle moulder, thicknesser and planer, mortiser, tenoner, wide-belt sander, band saw, CNC nesting router, domino and biscuit jointers, track saw, router, and full hand-tool kit including chisels, planes and marking gauges.

• Techniques: setting out and rod work, mortise and tenon, dovetails, housing and halving joints, scribing, veneering and laminating, edge banding, glue-up and clamping, hand finishing, spray and hand-applied finishes.

• Reading and planning: architectural and shop drawings, cutting lists, timber grading and moisture content, material take-offs, ordering ironmongery, FSC or PEFC chain of custody paperwork where the shop is certified, snagging lists.

• Safety: machine guarding, dust extraction, isolation and lock-off, PPE and hearing protection, working at height, manual handling, fire marshal duties on site.

Joinery is one of the few trades where a shop will still take someone with no paid history, because they would rather teach their own habits than untrain someone else's. What they want to see is hands, attitude and a reason to believe you will still be there in six months.

1. 1Write a two-line career objective: the type of shop or site you want, any woodwork you have done, and that you are looking for an apprenticeship or trainee position.
2. 2List anything you have built, even at home or at school: a workbench, a set of shelves, a door hung, decking, a shed. Say the material, the joints and how long it took.
3. 3Put Design and Technology, a college carpentry and joinery course or a short machine course under education with the year.
4. 4Add the practical things employers worry about: a driving licence, your own hand tools, whether you can start at 7 a.m., and whether you can lift and carry all day.
5. 5If you want site work, get a CSCS Green card before you apply. Workshops ask for it less, but it shows you are serious and some fit-out jobs will not let you on without one.
6. 6Walk into small joinery and cabinet shops with a printed copy. Most of them never advertise a job online.

There is no licence to work as a joiner in the UK. What employers look for is your qualification level, a CSCS card for site work and evidence that you have been trained on the machines you use.

• CSCS card: the colour follows your qualification. An NVQ Level 2 in Bench Joinery or Site Carpentry, or a completed Level 2 apprenticeship, generally supports a Blue Skilled Worker card, and Level 3 a Gold Advanced Craft card. Card rules change, so check the current CSCS requirements.
• Apprenticeships: the Level 2 carpentry and joinery apprenticeship (with an architectural joinery route for bench work) and the Level 3 advanced apprenticeship combine paid work with college. List the level, the route and the completion year; City and Guilds or other awarding body diplomas count too.
• Woodworking machines: employers must make sure you are trained and competent on the machines you use, and the spindle moulder gets particular attention from the HSE. Name any machine course you have done (spindle moulder, CNC, panel saw) with the year.
• Fire doors: since the Building Safety Act 2022, fire door making, fitting and inspection get far more scrutiny, and BS 8214 is the code of practice many specifications quote. Third-party schemes such as BM TRADA Q-Mark and FIRAS cover fire door installation, usually through the company. Name the scheme and the year only if you or your employer genuinely hold it. If not, write "experienced fitting fire door sets to the manufacturer's instructions" instead.
• If you trained abroad, for example as a finish carpenter in the US, name the qualification once with the country and say which UK qualification or CSCS card you hold or are working towards.

• One page. A joiner with twenty years still fits on one page if the early jobs become single lines.
• Put your cards and qualifications near the top, right under the personal statement. On site work they are the first thing checked.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. UK CVs leave them out, even though joinery CVs from some countries include them.
• Plain single column, no tables or icons. Many contractors print it, and recruitment agencies re-key it into their own system.
• List each employer with what they do in brackets, for example "retail fit-out contractor" or "architectural joinery shop". Company names alone tell a reader from another area nothing.
• Include a note on travel and shift work if you can do it: nights, weekends, working away. Fit-out contractors pay a premium for people who can.

• Titles: joiner, bench joiner, site joiner, architectural joiner, shopfitter, carpenter and joiner, cabinet maker, wood machinist.
• Product words: fire door, doorset, staircase, casement, sash window, wall panelling, shopfront, fitted furniture, architectural joinery.
• Machine words: spindle moulder, panel saw, thicknesser, planer, tenoner, wide-belt sander, CNC router, nesting.
• Method words: setting out, rod, first fix, second fix, scribing, veneer, edge banding, snagging, tolerance.
• Site words: CSCS, toolbox talk, RAMS, method statement, risk assessment, working at height, fit-out, handover.

Use these inside your bullets rather than in a keyword list at the bottom. A list of nouns with no numbers attached reads as padding to a foreman and adds nothing that a scanner will not already find in your experience section.